Rats and mice account for millions of dollars of loss each year in this country because of the damage they do at farms, food plants, hospitals, restaurants, and even any kind of commercial building.
In addition, food plants are compelled by government regulations to be free of rodents. These factors have caused owners to hire professional pest control companies to install traps, and also to maintain the traps. The most popular kind of trap today is the trap called the "wind-up automatic trap". It has a spring that is wound up by an operator by a key, it has an opening through which the rodent passes, attracted, surprisingly enough, by nothing more than the hole itself. It seems to the rodent like a good place to hide.
The trip mechanism inside such traps operate a paddle which is spring-operated to flip the mouse into a compartment in the trap from which there is no escape.
However, such traps are very expensive. The cost, even in quantity buying to a pest control company, is often approximately $6.00 per trap. When such traps are destroyed by being struck by wooden pallets being carried by forklift trucks, they become useless, and worse yet, the mice and rats can operate freely in that area until they are replaced.
The replacement cost of such a trap has been a great problem for many, many years without a solution. Use of these expensive traps and this problem have existed more than a decase.
An objective of this invention is, therefore, to provide a trap guard of strong steel and of minimum cost capable of extending around and protecting an expensive trap of this kind, leaving at least one end open for access to the winding key of the trap and for access by the rat to the hole by which he enters.
Another objective of this invention is to provide the trap guard with an open top so that when a flashlight is shined through holes in the front of the trap, the operator can look through the trap guard top opening and down through other holes in the trap and can see whether or not there are rodents in the trap, and whether the rodents are alive. If the animal is dead, the trap is then emptied. If the animal is alive, then it can be left in the trap, since mice die in 24 hours and small rats die quickly, too, from starvation, although mainly from lack of water supply.
The larger rats and the very large Norway rats are not involved, since they are too large for these traps anyway.
Another objective is to make a trap with one side closed. Although the closed side is usually used on the bottom, yet, if there is real danger in an area of something falling on the trap, then the open side is left downward and the closed side is turned upward.
The front and back ends of the trap guard are both open because there is an entrance hole for the rodent on both the front and back sides of the trap.
Economy is achieved by using a spacer bar construction with the middle of the top of the guard with the spacer bars of heavier material, such as one-fourth inch steel plate, and with the remainder of the guard made of the less expensive three-sixteenths inch steel plate bent to form. Economy is very important because of the great number of trap guards needed, even by a single pest control company.
A particular reason a guard has long been needed is because of intentional destruction by humans. Forklift truck operators have been making a game out of crushing the traps, sometimes with the front wheels of their forklift, sometimes with the back wheels, sometimes with the "spears" at the front of the forklift, and sometimes with the wooden pallet being carried. The risk of being caught by management is considerable, but it seems that such games help take care of the problem of boredom.